Friday, August 16, 2013

Less Zen, More Zest

I’ve got a suggestion for the Los Angeles Times.In this era of urgent austerity and universal
belt-tightening (except, that is, for the wealthy), they could save some time
and effort by recycling a headline they used to describe the actions of
California’s Governor, Jerry Brown a couple of days ago.

The piece, of course, was about how intellectual
and unconventional and zany Brown was and remains.The Governor is certainly not above showing
off his smarts, which is a bit unusual in an age when most politicians are
eager to show that they’re just as dumb as the lowest common denominator by way
of demonstrating the common touch.

And ‘unconventional’ is equally
accurate.Most governors understand that
their duty is, well, to govern.Brown
hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around this, and whether he’s refusing to outline
a political platform for voters, declining to address the state’s debilitating
structural dysfunction, or passing the buck for crafting a budget to the voters
via an initiative, most of his actions seem geared towards evading
responsibility, putting off decisions or, ideally, getting someone else to make
them for him.

He’s a classic opportunist...seeing
where the wind was blowing on Prop 8, he refused to defend the measure as
Attorney General or Governor.Presented
with a legally-different but principally-similar situation where Prop 13 was
concerned, Brown embraced the plutocratic measure dressed in populist robes
with an evangelical fervour, and it has proved central to the unmaking of
California.

The Governor is, we are told, constantly
planning his next move, and we’re always enjoined to be waiting for something
big, something spectacular, something transformational.That “something”, in the context of Brown’s
bid to intervene in California’s unsustainable political morass, turned out to
mean the construction of a short-term fix in the form of Prop 30, which did
exactly nothing in terms of addressing structural breakdown, economic
inequality, or the democratic deficit which so famously mangle our state.

Instead, it turned over a significant
part of the budgeting process to voters via initiative, adding yet another
level of unsustainability to our Frankensteinian system.In so doing, Brown created a situation in
which he could claim strategic genius if the measure passed, and shake his head
quietly at the poor judgment of voters if it didn’t.

In their book California Crackup: How
Reform Broke the Golden State and How we can Fix It, Mark Paul and Joe Mathews convincingly argue that
state government has become structured in such a way that it cannot possibly
work absent serious, comprehensive structural reform.Brown, who has spent decades playing the
political game in California, must surely know this.But instead he spends his days meditating on
abstractions and working out how best to bamboozle voters so that his poll
numbers can survive to fight another election without having to do any of the
serious business of governing.

Brown is perhaps uniquely situated—because
of the trust large numbers of voters unaccountably place in him, because of his
familiarity with the state’s structure, and because he doesn’t really have much
to lose—to tackle the issue of reform and articulate an affirmative vision of
California’s society.He’s had nearly
three years to gather his thoughts—forty years, if you start the clock with his
lacklustre and un-ambitious first term—and now we could use a little action.

In sum, Governor Brown, we could use a little
less Zen and a little more zest.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.